Berners-Lee: “We assume that when you look up a [web page], that you can get any page because that is the way it has always been and that is why the web has flourished… Of course a lot of companies would like to limit the pages you get.”

GoogVer and other companies busy constructing Web Chinese walls, should seriously consider whether they can make more money, not less (and benefit the world in the process – “doing well by doing good” or as it was recently rephrased, Do No Evil) by supporting and promoting an open Web. One area in which Berners-Lee vision has flourished is scientific research where open repositories allow scientists to collaborate globally and accelerate scientific progress. See, for example, the report on the Fifth International Conference on Open Repositories published in the new issue of D-Lib Magazine.

There’s money to be made by adding to, rather than subtracting from, the open Web. But when you stop innovating you resort to monopolistic practices.